Asia

Please enjoy this guest post from Ian Garstang As somebody who returns to Asia time and time again, there’s always been steep competition between the likes of Hong Kong and Seoul to gain a place in my heart as my all-time favourite Asian city, but recently, Tokyo was the city that stole it. Having visited with a head full of ... Read More »

If you are planning a trip to Indonesia, you’ll most likely find yourself in Jakarta at some point. Be sure to make time to visit Bogor, considered to be a suburb of the capital city. Bogor is the third largest city in Indonesia and, at one point in time, was the capital of the Sunda Kingdom. One of the great things about ... Read More »

The Republic of Turkey, snuggled right in the middle of the Eastern and Western worlds, is an amazing place to explore and discover a new culture that is entirely its own. This country boasts everything from mountains for skiing, to canyons for exploring (including the second-largest canyon in the world); to sparkling coasts and hidden islands that are perfect for ... Read More »

The goal for our RTW trip is to keep spending to under $100 USD/day. We assumed Cambodia would be fairly cheap. However, once we started looking at accommodations we realized it might be a bit more expensive than we expected. Luckily we found some great options on Airbnb that saved us a lot. The one thing we did not expect was the high ... Read More »

Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. A few weeks before our visit to Cambodia, Pol Pot and the phrase Khmer Rouge did not mean much to me and I wouldn’t have thought to include them in the same breath as Hitler or Stalin. However, it is clear Pol Pot ... Read More »

I was looking for an appropriate quote to describe Angkor Wat and what it is like to see it in person, but I couldn’t find anything suitable. It is an amazing sight and one that makes you wonder how this type of structure was even possible to construct so long ago. We have seen some incredible temples and landscapes on ... Read More »

The goal for our RTW trip is to keep spending to under $100 USD/day. We assumed Myanmar would be fairly cheap with it being SE Asia and still fairly untraveled as a whole. However, once we started looking at accommodations we realized it might be a bit more expensive than we expected. Accommodations were going to be at the high ... Read More »

As we stated in a previous post, we booked our trip to Myanmar without any actual plans in place. We discussed making Myanmar part of our original itinerary and then it got dropped because we didn’t want to deal with the hassle of visa issues in advance of our departure from the U.S. However, while in Bali we realized Myanmar ... Read More »

Yes folks, you read that correctly. We went all the way to Myanmar to visit a winery, sort of. After arriving in Nyaung Shwe (near Inle Lake), we were feeling rather “templed out” from the previous four days in Bagan and found ourselves in search of an alternate activity. A quick search revealed there was a winery nearby and we were sold! ... Read More »

For those not familiar with our play on words here, the phrase “freezin’ for a reason” is used in some places for events such as a polar plunge to help raise money for a good cause. And for those not aware of what a ‘polar plunge’ is, it is basically a bunch of crazy people (me included) jumping into a ... Read More »

Meet Matt & Alana

Hello! We’re Matt and Alana, two Americans with a passion for traveling and experiencing new places. We are former full-time world travelers transitioning back to a U.S. way of life. Follow along as we figure out how to make the most of our vacation time and get the best bang for our buck in America and abroad!